Taking on Video Veterinary Marketing: Hire a Professional or Self-Produce?

Once you’ve smartly decided to showcase your veterinary hospital with video marketing, it’s time to start thinking about production. There are two distinct choices: hire a professional or self-produce. Below are benefits and considerations for both.

Take 1: Hiring a Professional

Having a local videographer shoot your veterinary videos can provide some strong advantages.  Professionals have optimal camera and lighting equipment, superior editing capabilities, and basic video-making experience and knowledge. Additional upsides include:

Experienced video producers know what works best online. Their overall expertise translates into a superior product that promotes the high-quality services you offer and the outstanding and compassionate care that you and your staff members provide. 

Two potential drawbacks to hiring a professional include:

• Expense
• Lack of creative control

Hiring a professional photographer gets you the most bang for your buck. Typical minimum half day rates cost approximately $400. Editing may include an additional $50/hour. Considering that several good videos can be produced in 4 hours, it’s well worth the cost.  

A videographer may bring strong suggestions; however, it pays to listen to their advice. You will most likely be happy with the result and proud to post it on your veterinary website and social media platforms.

Take 2: Self-Produce

If you’re not sold on the idea of hiring a professional videographer, there still remains another approach to get videos up and working for you: make your own.  Three easy benefits are:

• Cost control
• Creative control
• Acceptable production value

With a simple digital camera, video camera or even an iPhone, you can create a video that demonstrates why local pet owners should bring their animals to your hospital.  

Disadvantages to homemade videos include:

•      Low production value
•      Mistakes
•      Wasted time from trial and error

Grab a Smartphone

Creating a video for your veterinary hospital’s website or social media platforms does not have to be an overwhelming or expensive ordeal. With a little research, curiosity and patience, you or one of your employees can capture and create your hospital’s essence and transform it into video.  In fact, a distinct advantage to having an employee shoot the footage is that your video will inevitably project the “personal” side of your practice.  The realistic and down-to-earth nature of the resulting video can serve as your best veterinary marketing tool.

Things to keep in mind for the on-staff videographer:

•  Check (and recheck) the recording audio features to ensure quality sound.
•  Steady the phone or use a tripod- no one likes to watch wobbly footage.
•  Horizontal shots- videos looks better when recorded horizontally
•  Proximity- get close to the subject so that s/he/it is clearly visible
•  Check (and recheck) the lighting
•  Make room- video files take up a lot of room on your phone, check space prior to shooting.

Scrolling Credits

Why should you care about making videos for your veterinary hospital? Because pet owners can see what you do best- offer quality and compassionate care to their beloved pets. The value added benefits? Video veterinary marketing boosts your search engine rankings (more website traffic!), educates your clients, and allows you to reach more pet owners than standard marketing tools.

Short on videos ideas?  Here are a few to ignite your inner Spielberg:

• Instructional videos
• Pet owner testimonials
• Pet videos
• Purely entertaining videos

The End

In the end, remember three tips: keep it short, keep it simple, and keep it fun.

Action.

To find out more about what VetNetwork’s highly skilled veterinary marketing and design team can do for your veterinary hospital website, please call us at 800-564-4215 today. VetNetwork is a full-service web design and veterinary marketing company dedicated to the needs of veterinary hospitals. Reach, engage, and grow today –  with us.

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